We aim at providing a foundation of a theory of "good" SAT representations F of boolean functions f. We argue that the hierarchy UC_k of unit-refutation complete clause-sets of level k, introduced by the authors, provides the most basic target classes, that is, F in UC_k is to be achieved for k as small as feasible. If F does not contain new variables, i.e., F is equivalent (as a CNF) to f, then F in UC_1 is similar to "achieving (generalised) arc consistency" known from the literature (it is somewhat weaker, but theoretically much nicer to handle). We show that for polysize representations of boolean functions in this sense, the hierarchy UC_k is strict. The boolean functions for these separations are "doped" minimally unsatisfiable clause-sets of deficiency 1; these functions have been introduced in [Sloan, Soerenyi, Turan, 2007], and we generalise their construction and show a correspondence to a strengthened notion of irredundant sub-clause-sets. Turning from lower bounds to upper bounds, we believe that many common CNF representations fit into the UC_k scheme, and we give some basic tools to construct representations in UC_1 with new variables, based on the Tseitin translation. Note that regarding new variables the UC_1-representations are stronger than mere "arc consistency", since the new variables are not excluded from consideration.

We investigate connections between information-theoretic and estimation-theoretic quantities in vector Poisson channel models. In particular, we generalize the gradient of mutual information with respect to key system parameters from the scalar to the vector Poisson channel model. We also propose, as another contribution, a generalization of the classical Bregman divergence that offers a means to encapsulate under a unifying framework the gradient of mutual information results for scalar and vector Poisson and Gaussian channel models. The so-called generalized Bregman divergence is also shown to exhibit various properties akin to the properties of the classical version. The vector Poisson channel model is drawing considerable attention in view of its application in various domains: as an example, the availability of the gradient of mutual information can be used in conjunction with gradient descent methods to effect compressive-sensing projection designs in emerging X-ray and document classification applications.

We propose an original model for inferring team strengths using a Markov Random Field, which can be used to generate historical estimates of the offensive and defensive strengths of a team over time. This model was designed to be applied to sports such as soccer or hockey, in which contest outcomes take value in a limited discrete space. We perform inference using a combination of Expectation Maximization and Loopy Belief Propagation. The challenges of working with a non-convex optimization problem and a high-dimensional parameter space are discussed. The performance of the model is demonstrated on professional soccer data from the English Premier League.

Most real-world Planning problems are multi-objective, trying to minimize both the makespan of the solution plan, and some cost of the actions involved in the plan. But most, if not all existing approaches are based on single-objective planners, and use an aggregation of the objectives to remain in the single-objective context. Divide and Evolve (DaE) is an evolutionary planner that won the temporal deterministic satisficing track at the last International Planning Competitions (IPC). Like all Evolutionary Algorithms (EA), it can easily be turned into a Pareto-based Multi-Objective EA. It is however important to validate the resulting algorithm by comparing it with the aggregation approach: this is the goal of this paper. The comparative experiments on a recently proposed benchmark set that are reported here demonstrate the usefulness of going Pareto-based in AI Planning.

We define the notion of rational closure in the context of Description Logics extended with a tipicality operator. We start from ALC+T, an extension of ALC with a typicality operator T: intuitively allowing to express concepts of the form T(C), meant to select the "most normal" instances of a concept C. The semantics we consider is based on rational model. But we further restrict the semantics to minimal models, that is to say, to models that minimise the rank of domain elements. We show that this semantics captures exactly a notion of rational closure which is a natural extension to Description Logics of Lehmann and Magidor's original one. We also extend the notion of rational closure to the Abox component. We provide an ExpTime algorithm for computing the rational closure of an Abox and we show that it is sound and complete with respect to the minimal model semantics.

I introduce Forecastable Component Analysis (ForeCA), a novel dimension reduction technique for temporally dependent signals. Based on a new forecastability measure, ForeCA finds an optimal transformation to separate a multivariate time series into a forecastable and an orthogonal white noise space. I present a converging algorithm with a fast eigenvector solution. Applications to financial and macro-economic time series show that ForeCA can successfully discover informative structure, which can be used for forecasting as well as classification. The R package ForeCA (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/ForeCA/index.html) accompanies this work and is publicly available on CRAN.

There are many methods developed to approximate a cloud of vectors embedded in high-dimensional space by simpler objects: starting from principal points and linear manifolds to self-organizing maps, neural gas, elastic maps, various types of principal curves and principal trees, and so on. For each type of approximators the measure of the approximator complexity was developed too. These measures are necessary to find the balance between accuracy and complexity and to define the optimal approximations of a given type. We propose a measure of complexity (geometrical complexity) which is applicable to approximators of several types and which allows comparing data approximations of different types.

We introduce a class of quadratic support (QS) functions, many of which play a crucial role in a variety of applications, including machine learning, robust statistical inference, sparsity promotion, and Kalman smoothing. Well known examples include the l2, Huber, l1 and Vapnik losses. We build on a dual representation for QS functions using convex analysis, revealing the structure necessary for a QS function to be interpreted as the negative log of a probability density, and providing the foundation for statistical interpretation and analysis of QS loss functions. For a subclass of QS functions called piecewise linear quadratic (PLQ) penalties, we also develop efficient numerical estimation schemes. These components form a flexible statistical modeling framework for a variety of learning applications, together with a toolbox of efficient numerical methods for inference. In particular, for PLQ densities, interior point (IP) methods can be used. IP methods solve nonsmooth optimization problems by working directly with smooth systems of equations characterizing their optimality. The efficiency of the IP approach depends on the structure of particular applications. We consider the class of dynamic inverse problems using Kalman smoothing, where the aim is to reconstruct the state of a dynamical system with known process and measurement models starting from noisy output samples. In the classical case, Gaussian errors are assumed in the process and measurement models. The extended framework allows arbitrary PLQ densities to be used, and the proposed IP approach solves the generalized Kalman smoothing problem while maintaining the linear complexity in the size of the time series, just as in the Gaussian case. This extends the computational efficiency of classic algorithms to a much broader nonsmooth setting, and includes many recently proposed robust and sparse smoothers as special cases.

The Stable Marriage Problem (SMP) is a well-known matching problem first introduced and solved by Gale and Shapley (1962). Several variants and extensions to this problem have since been investigated to cover a wider set of applications. Each time a new variant is considered, however, a new algorithm needs to be developed and implemented. As an alternative, in this paper we propose an encoding of the SMP using Answer Set Programming (ASP). Our encoding can easily be extended and adapted to the needs of specific applications. As an illustration we show how stable matchings can be found when individuals may designate unacceptable partners and ties between preferences are allowed. Subsequently, we show how our ASP based encoding naturally allows us to select specific stable matchings which are optimal according to a given criterion. Each time, we can rely on generic and efficient off-the-shelf answer set solvers to find (optimal) stable matchings.

Over the last two decades, propositional satisfiability (SAT) has become one of the most successful and widely applied techniques for the solution of NP-complete problems. The aim of this paper is to investigate theoretically how Sat can be utilized for the efficient solution of problems that are harder than NP or co-NP. In particular, we consider the fundamental reasoning problems in propositional disjunctive answer set programming (ASP), Brave Reasoning and Skeptical Reasoning, which ask whether a given atom is contained in at least one or in all answer sets, respectively. Both problems are located at the second level of the Polynomial Hierarchy and thus assumed to be harder than NP or co-NP. One cannot transform these two reasoning problems into SAT in polynomial time, unless the Polynomial Hierarchy collapses. We show that certain structural aspects of disjunctive logic programs can be utilized to break through this complexity barrier, using new techniques from Parameterized Complexity. In particular, we exhibit transformations from Brave and Skeptical Reasoning to SAT that run in time O(2^k n^2) where k is a structural parameter of the instance and n the input size. In other words, the reduction is fixed-parameter tractable for parameter k. As the parameter k we take the size of a smallest backdoor with respect to the class of normal (i.e., disjunction-free) programs. Such a backdoor is a set of atoms that when deleted makes the program normal. In consequence, the combinatorial explosion, which is expected when transforming a problem from the second level of the Polynomial Hierarchy to the first level, can now be confined to the parameter k, while the running time of the reduction is polynomial in the input size n, where the order of the polynomial is independent of k.